


In the Eleventh Hour

by deino (aseaofsound)



Series: the universe and us [4]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon | Pokemon Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon Versions
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Gen, I refer to Moon as Mizuki, Introspection, Near Death Experiences, which is kind of her official japanese name? idk lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 09:24:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13701612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aseaofsound/pseuds/deino
Summary: Because there’s nothing quite like near-death experiences for bonding with your not-friend.—UB hunting, hand-holding, and learning how to be strong.





	In the Eleventh Hour

****She really should’ve packed more.

“So between us, we only have two hyper potions, one full heal, and one full restore.”

Mizuki shuffles her feet and avoids Gladion’s gaze. The bag rustles as he drops it to the ground.

“And who was in charge of supplies?”

“Sorry?” she tries. Gladion’s jaw is clenched so hard she probably could’ve cut herself on it. “I honestly forgot…”

She can practically feel his restraint, holding him back from lashing out, when he takes a deep, harsh breath and drags his hand down his face.

“Honesty isn’t going to keep us alive out there.”

He brushes past her and glares at the setting sun, at the tranquil ocean over the cliff. They decided to make camp on the edge of the forest surrounding the Verdant Cavern, where UB-02 Beauty was supposedly seen. Mizuki watches him, silent, before she begins setting up her sleeping pack.

They have a long journey ahead of them.

✸

✸

✸

She opens her eyes just before the sun rises. Gladion spares her a look as he begins to pack up, looking like he hasn’t slept a wink. Mizuki suspects that he hasn’t.

“Did you sleep at all?”

He shakes his head. “We have to get moving before the beast does,” he says, throwing his unused sleeping pack into a bag. “Sleep will only slow us down.”

“Sleep is what’s going to keep us alive,” she counters, though she’s too tired to really put meaning behind it.

“I’ll survive,” he says. He gets up and dusts off his pants, throwing the bag over his shoulder. “It should take us three hours to get deep into the cavern, where the beast should be.”

Gladion takes off for the forest without her. Mizuki has to jog to catch up with him, fatigue blurring her vision. She yawns into her hand and blinks away the moisture in her eyes, and once her vision clears she watches Gladion, a step behind him. His shoulders are tense, his knuckles white as he grips Silvally’s poké ball, and Mizuki can’t help feeling selfish, somehow.

But she says nothing as they forge on into the dark.

✸

✸

✸

“Mizuki! Get back!”

She turns on her heel and ducks, a ringing in her ears as the beast behind her moves faster than any of them can follow. Gladion issues an attack from Silvally, its coloring bright, pale blue like the sky.

“Oh god,” she mumbles, clutching her hand over her mouth. Vaguely, she hears her honchkrow squawk as it intercepts Pheromosa, wings whistling in the stagnant air of the cave, before she lurches and throws up the granola bars she had for breakfast and lunch.

_“You’re gonna get nauseous, so be prepared. Sorry, kid, but you Fallers are the only way to get close to ‘em.”_

In her head she curses Nanu out and gags. There is nothing left in her stomach to cough up, unless her whole digestive system wants to come out. And it might.

“Mizuki! The beast balls!’

Her head is _pounding_.

“ _Mizuki!_ ”

Are those footsteps Gladion, or her impending death by Ultra Beast? She feels fumbling somewhere close by, the rustling of her pack, and then hears the familiar sucking sound of a poké ball going off.

It’s quiet except for Gladion’s labored breathing. Honchkrow perches itself on a stalagmite by her head and nudges her with its beak.

“Did we,” she slurs, wincing. “Did we do it?”

Gladion holds up the beast ball, so bright and blue even in the dim cavern. His hair is damp with sweat, but Mizuki feels a lot worse than he looks. Hell, she probably looks worse, too, but her head feels too heavy for her to check if she’s puked on herself.

“We still have one more,” he says. She groans and covers her eyes with a hand. When she gathers the strength to look up, Gladion looks sympathetic, for once. He offers her a hand, then an arm, to lean on, even if their height difference makes it awkward. Somewhere in a more lucid part of her mind she thinks of how much they’ve grown up, how they’re still trying to save the world after all this time.

✸

✸

✸

The second time around Gladion is quicker, and is able to deduce its movements before the battle drags on. Mizuki still feels like complete and utter shit by the time they encounter the second pheromosa, but she only throws up once, and that’s an accomplishment in and of itself.

They camp a little ways away from the entrance to the cavern. Mizuki lies on her back facing the stars overhead, her body still reeling from the stress. Looker, Anabel, and Nanu all but bombarded her with the UB containment mission when she turned eighteen, as if her being an adult made her any more expendable. And who was she to say no? Champion of Alola, refusing to neutralize a very real threat?

“Did you choose to go on this mission?”

She doesn’t check to see if Gladion even heard her question.

“I’m not sure it’s that simple,” he says. When she looks up, he’s wiping the dirt from Silvally’s poké ball. ”I chose it when I ran away with Null nearly a decade ago.”

_“My partner Null was born to be a beast killer!”_

Mizuki blinks the memory away. She was just a kid, some random kid from Kanto going on her journey just for the fun of it. She isn’t quite sure how she ended up with a life-or-death mission on her hands, or the safety of the Alolan people on her shoulders.

But the memories come flooding back to her, distorted by time yet somehow clear all the same—Lusamine’s private office, Cosmog’s tortured cries, Gladion begging to be the one to save them all. And she feels selfish and guilty all over again.

With a sigh she turns her face away from the stars, sick of their glaring little eyes. Gladion glances at her, opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but then the words never come.

✸

✸

✸

In the morning they set out for the rendezvous point where they’re supposed to meet Looker. The Route 2 motel is a downhill walk from the Verdant Cavern, the path clear and hugging the coast.

“We should get there in four hours, provided we don’t stop,” Gladion says, scrutinizing at Rotom’s map. The pokémon buzzes pleasantly whenever he taps the screen, waving its arm-like appendages around.

Mizuki keeps her eyes trained forward as Hau`oli comes into view. She holds her fingers up to eye-level, as if to pinch the city between her two fingers. It’s hard for her to believe they’re on a dangerous mission when Alola is so calm and enveloping, when her mother is in such close reach and children and pokémon alike frolic together in the short grasses.

Nevertheless the beast balls holding the two pheromosa dig into her lower back from inside her pack, and the light feeling that comes with simply being in Alola disappears just as quickly as she dreamed of it.

✸

✸

✸

Gladion knocks on the motel door. Looker pokes his head out, glancing around suspiciously, before quickly ducking back inside, motioning for the two of them to get in.

“So how was it? Should be a piece of cake for two accomplished trainers such as yourselves, no?” Looker asks, his ambiguous accent oddly soothing to the ear in spite of just how wrong he is.

Mizuki digs into her pack and produces the beast balls, setting them down carefully on the bed. She sighs, settling on the bed and drawing her knees to her chest. Gladion leans against the wall and stares at the dull carpet.

Looker doesn’t make a move to take the poké balls. He furrows his brow, nodding thoughtfully. “Indeed, this comes at no surprise. Fallers are quite vulnerable, what with the great amount of energy they exude.” He glances at Mizuki, face unreadable, then out the window, as if searching for something once lost.

“We both could’ve died,” Gladion says. He doesn’t sound upset or angry, like Mizuki expected him to. Instead he just sounds tired, centuries old in spite of everything. “Mizuki especially.”

Looker smiles, though it’s guarded and a little sad. “I’m afraid that’s the nature of our work. Everything must be done for the greater good. But I’m sure you both understand that.”

Gladion looks away, his face twisted in his inner turmoil. Mizuki wonders if he’s thinking of Necrozma, of his own sacrifices, of her.

✸

✸

✸

Anabel accompanies them on their way to the next mission. She is beautiful and poised, her long lilac hair flowing with the vessel, so much so that Mizuki can’t help feeling like half a child next to her.

“All right there, Champion?” the woman asks her, giving her a half-smile.

Mizuki nods, keeping her eye out for her primarina, whom she released to swim alongside the ship. She has never been the seasick type, but the mere thought of nausea, of what she’s going to live through again and several more times over, makes her gulp.

But Anabel is not the chief of the UB Task Force for nothing, and Mizuki can feel her eyes lingering on her profile as Akala Island comes into view.

“I _am_ sorry that we sprung this on you,” Anabel says. Her voice is quiet and sympathetic. “But we figured there was no one more suited to this role of protecting people.”

Mizuki doesn’t know what to say to that. There are many skilled trainers in Alola, yet few have come into close contact with an angry being hellbent on stealing their moon, the only thing keeping them from the darkness of night. But who is she protecting, if all she can do is cower in a corner as her pokémon and Gladion risk their lives for her? But before the silence stretches for too long, Gladion returns with water bottles for all three of them, and then they watch as the island gets bigger and bigger until their feet touch land again.

Anabel bids them farewell at the edge of Route 6 to scout the surrounding areas. Together, they forge on to the straight path leading to Lush Jungle.

✸

✸

✸

As she stumbles out of the way of a lightning strike, Mizuki can’t help but find it ironic that these beasts keep settling in trial sites. She was nothing more than a scrawny eleven year old at that time, doing things just because they were enjoyable and everyone said so, participating in supervised trial battles where the pokémon would eventually stand down and yield to her.

In the present, the beast, a surreal tree-like mass of wires, strikes whatever comes in reach in the dense jungle, bringing tree limbs crashing down to the forest floor, smoking with electricity. This one is significantly slower than the two pheromosa, but its range makes it more difficult for Mizuki to escape to safety unscathed.

She calls for her flygon to attack, knowing she won’t have to worry so much for the desert dragon, and makes an attempt to flee to a woody alcove in the distance. But before she can make her way toward it, her ankle catches on a knot of tree roots, sending her crashing to the uneven ground. Her head pounds from her proximity to the beast and her stomach gurgles, familiar but uncomfortable all the same. Gladion shouts at her a good ways away, but all she can do is listen to the silence of the jungle and her own short breaths, the otherworldly disturbance frightening the wild pokémon into hiding.

Mizuki closes her eyes and feels oddly light, as though she were flying through the skies above Alola on the back of a charizard, fearless and free, as the world goes to flames somewhere afar.

✸

✸

✸

When she comes to, she is in a bed, a real, solid bed with firm pillows and a scratchy blanket. A hushed voice floats through her ears, sounding strange even though she knows the language. She thinks in Kantonian for the first time in almost a decade.

“Oh! You’re awake! She’s awake.”

Mizuki opens her eyes to Anabel hovering over her in concern. The older woman presses a button on the gadget in her ear.

“How’re you feeling Mizuki? You must be in shock,” she says kindly, settling on the foot of the bed. Her face, usually so serious, softens. “Gladion’s crobat flew you here. He’s in another room recovering.”

“What happened to the beast?” Mizuki asks, her voice scratchy.

Anabel lowers her eyes to her folded hands. “Gladion had little choice but to incapacitate it, else it would’ve killed him and both of your teams.”

Mizuki’s breath hitches in her throat at the mention of her pokémon. She counts four of her five poké balls sitting on the end table, panic punching her in the gut. She feels weak and helpless all over again.

“Don’t worry, your flygon is getting treated at the pokécenter.” Anabel sighs. Even frowning, she looks serene, somehow. “You know, the last thing we want is to have to kill a living being. And yet sometimes we don’t have a choice. That xurkitree might have wrecked a significant portion of the jungle if Gladion hadn’t… neutralized it.”

Mizuki is rendered speechless, yet she can’t help but think on those words, think on her role in this mission. And what if she is the one who is sacrificed next time, instead of a beast? What if it’s any of her pokémon, what if it’s Gladion, or any of his?

“Is he ok?” Mizuki asks. “Is Gladion ok?”

Anabel hesitates. This does nothing to quell Mizuki’s guilt. “He’s hurt, but he’ll make a full recovery. Looker should be returning soon with an update.”

With that, Anabel leaves her be, presumably to keep watch outside the motel or make cryptic phone calls. Mizuki hugs her pillow, thinking of Ultra Space and its distorted worlds and warp holes, thinks of places people were never meant to go. She lingers in the space between sleep and consciousness, unable to fully go under but too tired to rise from the bed.

When she wakes it’s already noon. Anabel is nowhere to be found, so Mizuki leaves to find Looker or Gladion, her head throbbing dully, not even bothering to change out of the pajamas Anabel put her into.

Looker walks out of one of the rooms and jumps at the sight of her, but then he smiles, so disarmingly, giving Mizuki pause.

“Mizuki! I was just leaving to get us all a bite to eat. Were you going to see Gladion?”

She doesn’t say anything, just nods dumbly, and slowly inches the door to his room open.

✸

✸

✸

“I’m sorry.”

This is the first thing she says to him following the xurkitree encounter. He’s wrapping a particularly bad gash on his calf in fresh gauze, but doesn’t seem to hear her.

Mizuki swallows, and tries again. This time, he looks up at her, his expression calm in spite of everything.

“What for?”

“Everything?” she says, unsure of where exactly she was going with this, but feeling the need to tell him anyway. “For being dead weight? For not being strong enough?”

Gladion frowns, and Mizuki tenses at the sight of it. “This mission isn’t about being strong,” he says, his voice quieter than she’s ever heard it. His face is riddled with little cuts, probably from the thick foliage of the jungle, and she self-consciously runs her fingers over her own. “Bravery is more important than strength, sometimes.”

She wrings her hands in front of her, feeling peculiarly vulnerable. This is not something she’s used to, not with people, anyway.

“Do you mind if I sit with you?” she asks.

He shrugs, so she perches herself next to him and watches as he dresses his wounds, albeit messily.

“I thought you’d be more careful than this.”

He glares at her from the corner of his eye. Mizuki feels a smile slowly creep onto her face at the sight of it, and then they sit in silence for a while.

“I envied you,” she blurts without thinking. Gladion looks at her, dumbfounded and confused. In spite of it all, it’s too late for her to backtrack now, so she continues, “That time, when we were kids, with Necrozma.” Mizuki chews on her lip, unsure if she’s making any sense.

But when he doesn’t reply, she forces herself to explain years’ worth of feelings she’s kept quiet, buried and dormant like most of her thoughts and emotions. “That was your mission, not mine,” she says. What has she lost to Ultra Space? She’d barely been in Alola for a year, yet there she was, anyway, riding on the back of Solgaleo. “You said Null was made to be a beast killer, that you lost your father to that other world. I still can’t help but feel like I took that from you. Your...vengeance, or something like that.”

He is quiet for a long while. Mizuki avoids his gaze, wiping her sweaty palms on her pants. Meanwhile, the sun rises high and bright out the window, casting the room in its light. But the shadows only start to grow from here on out.

In the end, Gladion just sort of huffs through his nose.

“What are you doing still thinking about that?”

This, she does not expect, and Mizuki just gapes at him. There is not much that can catch her off-guard, not after everything, but Gladion still manages to do just that.

“I know what I said about strength and bravery,” he says. “But I wasn’t strong enough, anyway, at that time. Who knows what would’ve happened if I went instead?”

At this point they will never know. It has been a long time since they were children, since either of them have felt invincible.

And then Gladion hisses, mutters a curse under his breath, and throws the medical tape that was just on his leg to the floor in a tangled heap. Mizuki watches this all happen, indifferent.

“Do you need help?”

His bandages end up messier than they were before. It’s also the first time Mizuki has felt relaxed in a while, and if Gladion smiles, just the tiniest, slightest quirk of the corners of his lips, then she keeps it stored as a secret in her memory.

✸

✸

✸

“Are you sure you’re ready?”

Mizuki nods.

“We don’t want to rush you. You’re both still recovering, after all—”

“Just let ‘em go, chief,” Nanu drawls. “They’re kids. They spring back up like it’s nothing.”

“That may be, but the last attack left them both critically injured. What if something worse happens? What will we do then?” Anabel argues.

“They know what they signed up for.”

“That doesn’t mean we should send them to their deaths!”

Nanu sighs and drags a hand down his weathered face. His gaze moves between Mizuki and Gladion, sizing them up in that lazy yet keen way of his.

“We’ve got Alola’s Champion,” he says, gesturing at Mizuki. “And we’ve got Gladion and his so-called beast killer. I think they’ll be fine. They’re still here, aren’t they, chief?”

“We’ll be all right,” Mizuki says, if only to assuage Anabel, who doesn’t look any more convinced. Next to her, Gladion shoulders his bag and secures his poké balls within reach.

“You heard her. Now off with you. I don’t need Tapu Bulu getting involved in this mess.”

✸

✸

✸

They set off when the Haina is calmer, the sands swirling lazily. Their shoes sink into the sand, but they are careful not to accidentally step into trapinch or krokorok territory.

Mizuki squints in the brightness of the desert, careful not to lose Gladion’s presence at her side. If either of them get lost, they are doomed, so she keeps her fingers looped around the strap of his pack.

“Shouldn’t be that hard to find a building-sized beast out here,” Gladion says, squinting into the distance.

Mizuki nods, and begins to say something when her stomach lurches familiarly. She moves her grip to Gladion’s arm just as an ear-shattering blast could be heard somewhere close by, and then a sheer wave of heat carries over them.

Their pokémon coalesce in flashes of light. This time, Mizuki fights the nausea, the pressure in her head, so that she might stand beside her team, beside Gladion. This fight is hers, too, and she can’t let herself forget, but Gladion looks at her as if to say _what are you doing_?

In truth, she can’t say for sure. And yet she still stands as straight as she can without feeling like she’s going to collapse, and maybe this is strength contained within itself.

✸

✸

✸

The missions go on—a new UB there, another celesteela here, more threats to neutralize than there were yesterday. Mizuki takes it all as it comes, because there is little else she can do. But Gladion is there, too, hot on her heels, ready to catch her when she inevitably falls.

“Ready?” he asks.

She hesitates.

“I’m not sure I’ll ever be.”

He looks back at her, the sunset behind him casting his face in oranges and pinks and ochres, and his green eyes almost appear yellow in the waning light. Her head begins to ache, but she focuses her sight on him anyway.

And perhaps being brave or strong has never been about pokémon, but rather about knowing it will never get easier and jumping headlong into it anyway. Gladion takes one of her sweaty, nervous palms in his own and squeezes before facing _this_ , whatever is to come, feet planted firmly in the ground, the two of them side by side.

**Author's Note:**

> overall, i'm not sure if i'm that happy with this? but hey I finished it and that's something in and of itself  
> Battles are so impossible to write, so kudos to anyone who can.
> 
> I wrote this in the USUM universe because Gladion wouldn't be Aether President, and so it would make more sense for him to be able to go on this mission. Also because there was no UB hunting in USUM or interpol stuff which I found disappointing.
> 
> This turned out longer than I thought it would be. I originally wanted it to be 2k, but just kept writing. It is really self-contained in that I don't reference other events in-game that much, which feels kind of weird but it's just how it came out.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and comment on your way out!


End file.
